


The Green Knight Poem

by secace



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Genre: M/M, and gawain writes sgatgk, anyway in this one theyre horrible little artists, does that make sense? no, the server.... idk.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23834395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: “It wasn’t so much that anything happened. It was more like a series of very vivid images- blood on snow, green holly against red berries, red blood against green metal- red and green everything, in contrast- and this overwhelming sense of my impending death,” Gawain explained, voice distant.“That sounds awful,” Lancelot said sympathetically and offered Gawain a slice of bread.He took it and frowned. “It was sublime, in the most archaic and philosophical sense.”
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	The Green Knight Poem

“I had a weird dream,” Gawain announced, in lieu of good morning.

Lancelot looked up from the toaster which he was trying to force into functioning. “Oh- well- I really did mean to get some work done this morning but-”

“Not that kind of dream. Look, listen it was--” Gawain gestured vaguely, and between that and the way his brown hair, unbrushed, was going everywhere he looked half-mad. He hopped up to sit on the counter and waited politely for a signal to continue.

After one more hopeless attempt with the toaster, which shocked him in self-defence, Lancelot gave up and accepted slices of untoasted bread for breakfast.

“What happened?” 

“It wasn’t so much that anything happened. It was more like a series of very vivid images- blood on snow, green holly against red berries, red blood against green metal- red and green everything, in contrast- and this overwhelming sense of my impending death,” Gawain explained, voice distant.

“That sounds awful,” Lancelot said sympathetically and offered Gawain a slice of bread.

He took it and frowned. “It was sublime, in the most archaic and philosophical sense.”

“...I see,” said Lancelot, who did not see of course, but was beginning to gather that Gawain was excited about this vision and was, therefore, happy for him. 

“I might do something with it. Actually, I think I must,” Gawain decided, reaching for the bag to get a second- third? Slice of bread. “God, we have to get groceries or something, before ’starving artist’ ceases to be a figure of speech.”

“I can go?” 

Gawain waved him off. “You have that big painting to finish, the one without horses. I’ll go later.”

“They are all the one without horses, except for the singular one I’ve ever painted with horses,” Lancelot pointed out, putting the mostly empty bread bag into the fridge with a resentful look at the toaster.

“Yes, and I think it’s your best work.”

“So you’ve said,” Lancelot laughed.

“You’re off to cover yourself in turpentine I imagine?” said Gawain regretfully, jumping down from the counter and crossing the little kitchen in a step to take his hand.

“I- well yes, sorry.”

“No apologies,” Gawain chided lightly, giving him a quick kiss. “Besides, I'm growing fond of the stuff, I’ve come to associate it with you.”

“Oh, well-” He flushed, smiling, “That’s not ideal. Not very romantic.”

“Not remotely,” Gawain agreed, kissed him again, and sent him off to the least poorly ventilated room in the apartment, which was now a studio and was supposed to be the bedroom, which was why they slept on a fold-out couch in the living room, which was also the kitchen. 

With a thoughtful frown, Gawain leaned back against the window frame and considered the street, which by the looks of things did not meet his expectations. He felt very deeply that snow should be falling, that the buildings should not be so tall nor the trees so sparse and tended. The next several hours were spent pacing, staring, thinking of blood and snow and holly and other things beyond himself. Then, around noon, he went out for groceries and a cheap new toaster.

* * *

“If you had promised to go meet your death in a year, would you go, at the end of it?” Gawain asked, unprompted.

Lancelot thought about it for a long moment, with the same earnest application he gave to anything, whether or not it was deserving. “I suppose that it would depend on who I made the promise to. Would you?”

Gawain tapped his fingers on the coffee table and took a sip of his drink. “I dont know. I hope so.”

He changed the conversation, returning to the usual good cheer. They watched a movie and had takeout to celebrate getting groceries, a move which didn’t make sense even to them, and for a while, it seemed forgotten. It wasn’t, of course. 

October became December and they had their first real snow, and Gawain stared at it like he had never seen it before. His wardrobe became overrun with green and occasionally he would ask odd questions, about promises and seasons and honour. And he was writing something, besides the much-hated formulaic articles that paid the bills and kept his uncle and editor happy.

“Its a poem,” Gawain explained one day, perched in the sunny windowsill like an old tomcat, watching Lancelot paint. More details were not forthcoming, and Lancelot did not allow it to trouble him for indeed if he worried over every odd thing Gawain did or said he would never have time for anything else.

Christmas approached and Gawain faced it with a curious sort of nervous anticipation. In the mornings, he glared at the calendar, which they had gotten free from the bank and insisted on using despite their mutual distaste for its saccharine depictions of seasonal Americana. In the evenings, he frowned at the sun setting to mark another day gone- though this wasn’t so unusual, he was always oddly resentful of sunsets.

But there was a marked increase as they neared Christmas, which paradoxically did not decrease his enthusiasm for it. Holly wreaths began to festoon every doorknob, mantle, nook and cranny, and anything that wasn’t red, green, gold or white was either changed to be so or hidden shamefully in the back of a cabinet. Lancelot observed this transformation of his living space with the same graceless patience with which he faced most things.

And then Christmas arrived, and Gawain spent the day in a nervous tizzy which by the evening had resolved itself into a drunk tizzy, necessitating an early departure from Arthur's Christmas party which, in honesty, Lancelot did not want to be at anyway. Gawain spent a great deal of the evening staring suspiciously at various doors till, mercifully, he passed out on the kitchen counter and was carried to bed, which was in this case couch.

The next morning, Lancelot awoke to being gently shaken.

“Er- yes?” sunlight was streaming through the window, Gawain haloed in it above him, a slightly unhinged grin on his face.

“I'm alive!” He announced, sitting back and extending his arms, perfectly arranged in the light like Hadrian in the Pantheon.

_ And you woke me just to say that?  _ A normal person might remark, then roll over and go back to sleep. 

“You are!” Lancelot exclaimed, matching Gawain's triumphal enthusiasm. He pushed himself up to a seated position, Gawain shifting to accommodate him.

“I was sure I was going to die yesterday,” He explained, touching a hand to the back of his neck hesitantly, “I dont know why. But I didn’t, and I know how to finish my poem!”

“Congratulations,” Lancelot said, and pulled him into a kiss.

Despite this proclamation, it was another month before the rough draft was deemed presentable enough for human eyes. The nervous tension was blessedly gone, although a reversal of his wardrobe monochromatism was not affected. Green suited him though, anyone would admit.

Gawain was not as a rule self-conscious. That was an emotion for other people, like shame and ugliness, and not being hungry. But this was as close to the feeling as he ever got, as evinced by his nervous shifting in the windowsill. 

It was a rule never formally defined yet solid as stone, that anything Gawain wrote, excepting the abysmal drivel he produced for Arthur, was to be shown before anyone else to Lancelot, usually read aloud in the studio, while his hands were at work and his mind was unoccupied.

It was a curious story, beautifully written but odd and archaic in its speech and its understanding. The central figure, an unnamed knight from the dark ages, confronted by a green-hued spectre of the otherworld and agreeing to various exchanges. The stroke of a great axe against the Green Man for another, in a year, against the Knight. Animal pelts for kisses and wives for husbands and the whole thing in a wine drunk Catholic haze, culminating in a promise finally broken and a truncated return stroke, the knight returning home safely.

“I liked that there was a happy ending,” pronounced Lancelot when it was over. He was not and never claimed to be a literary critic, which was probably _ why  _ he got to read everything first.

“But it wasn’t happy,” Gawain said, “he returned home in shame. He failed.”

“You’re being a little harsh,” Lancelot protested mildly. “He didn’t get his head cut off, and he got to go home to all those people who were worried about him. And he got a belt and an axe.”

Gawain laughed, “Yes, objectively I suppose he made bank on this quest.”

This apparently being enough, they settled into companionable silence broken by occasional happy arguments over what music was played in the background. Gawain sent his Green Knight poem to Arthur, who complained that there was too much kissing and too little fighting, and was bullied into publishing it anyway. Winter turned to spring.

**Author's Note:**

> they are simply gay and dumb and that is all. 
> 
> is this a reincarnation au??? you decide!!


End file.
